Me too....based on his fights with Mike Tyson, people gave Ruddock a good chance! Later the fight was named retroactively a world title fight by the WBC, after Riddick Bowe decided to dump the WBC belt on a trash can. Like Norton-Young in 1978.
Semantics he was Ring Magazine champ in 2004 and then had to retire because of injuries and afterwards was the WBC champ
Holyfield and unifying the world title. A lot of other good wins though. Should of probably (as others said) of been his draw vs Holy field, but I'll go one step further.....it should of been for undisputed vs Bowe!
Vitali was hardly a dominant champ tho. Unless you consider beating up bums dominating a division. He was 2000's version of Wilder when it comes to the resume.
His best win is Corrie Sanders, lol. And he defended that title once against Danny Williams, who wasn't even close to Top 10 guy at the time. After reclaiming the WBC belt from Peter (great performance btw) he made 9 title defences and only 3 of them were against Top 10 guys. He's exactly like Wilder.
Idk the rankings but Larry Donald, Kirk Johnson, Corrie Sanders, Sam Peters, Juan Carlos Gomez, Adamek and Chisora were all solid wins and only win that Wilder has that are comparable was Ortiz and Stiverene and Wilder looked way worse then Vitali in all those fights.
Semantics!? It is nothing of the sort. You are either the Champion, or you’re a contender with a meaningless strap-on.
Sorry but that's not how boxing works if you have a world championship belt you're a champ end of story.